A week before the 2024 US Presidential election, perhaps the most critical time ever for American governance, the Washington Post abdicated its responsibility to endorse Kamala Harris for POTUS. It was a stunning refusal to uphold one of its primary duties as a beacon of the nation’s free press.
An “endorsement” of Harris really only necessitated a recitation of why her opponent’s campaign to install nihilist fascism was inimical to American democracy, not to mention the stability of the world it still purported to lead. So when the paper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, launched into Monday morning kabuki after the decision was announced, whining about returning to the purity of WaPo’s roots by no longer contributing to “a perception of bias,” he only laid bare to all that duty and civic obligation had been exorcised from its mission statement.
WaPo policy was now beholden to the fickle opportunism of the guy who paid its bills. A mighty institution of US journalism, that had once forced a corrupt President to resign, now bent the knee to the worst American politics could conjure. Not eight years after declaring “Democracy dies in the darkness” to reassure its readers after Donald Trump’s first victory, Bezos shrugged and turned out the light on any future commitments to keeping the faith and fighting the good fight.
That craven surrender turned out to be a depressing harbinger of things to come, as the full landscape of corporate media anchors and analysts treated America blowing its brains out on election night as if just any other Republican had prevailed. Turns out the Post had merely reflected the nation’s refusal to let anything subsume its pathological determination to create normalcy, its freakish adherence to the debilitating distractions of routine, even in the wake of a major party candidate primarily driven to make certain everybody knew he was, not only a fascist, but a demented sociopath as well.
On January 1, 2025, three weeks before the unapologetic seditionist will lie and swear to defend the Constitution, the same editorial board rang in the New Year by musing about the “fascinating interplay between alarmism and complacency, between catastrophizing about the future and idealizing the past.” While acknowledging the country is “entering a stretch that we assume will be chaotic and tumultuous,” the Bezos braintrust pointed to the “possibility that the next phase of history will surprise in that respect, too.” In other words, who knows; it’s likely a dark age that awaits in three weeks, a specter Winston Churchill dubbed at an analogous juncture in world history “The Gathering Storm,” but why sweat it, surprises happen… If only.
Trump/MAGA have spent nine years making sure absolutely nobody should be surprised at the depths its nihilism can descend to. “Promises made, promises kept” is just another way of saying constructive approaches to governance only scare and confuse its servile adherents; they demand the primal simplicity of bullying and scapegoating, empty assurances that Fox/AM’s incessant revisionism validates the vile impulses that now define their world view. Progress only benefits others they detest and creates new challenges they have no interest in addressing, even less in resolving.
Four years ago to the day our incoming President committed treason for all the world to see. Nobody who watched events unfold on January 6th can plausibly dispute that. But to make sure history would be just as certain, Congress created a committee, co-chaired by a ranking Republican, that could not have more exhaustively examined and chronicled the day’s mayhem. It’s report was as clear cut as it was thorough, placing full blame precisely where it belonged. Today Congress certified that perpetrator’s return to the White House without fanfare.
So nothing should surprise from the moment MAGA’s anti-leader steps to the microphone on the 20th and ad-libs his way through just another of his diatribes. There is nothing too petty, or too cruel, or too hateful, or too lazy, or too corrupt, or too incompetent, or too pandering, or too inane, or perhaps most ironic to Inauguration Day, too seditious for this cabal to inflict on those they will put their hands on a Bible and lie about serving. That’s a certainty.
On January 21st the ever-dwindling number of Washington Post subscribers will peruse a front page that will likely cover the dawn of American fascism no differently than it reported on any other Presidential inauguration. Whatever our Buzz Windrip spews after we hand him the nuclear codes, you can bet it will be disinfected and rendered simpatico with the coming year’s events calendar. The Super Bowl, the Oscars, March Madness, 4th of July celebrations, graduations, weddings, your kid’s soccer game, etc etc etc; they will all be etched in stone, sacrosanct signposts that define American life. And democracy, or even a functional government apparatus? It will die in broad daylight. Most won’t give it a second thought. After all, America hates surprises. BC
I have always been amazed at how lacking in courage politicians are over the prospect of losing a lousy job. To have Bezos and some of the other world’s richest people similarly intimidated despite having more money than they could ever spend is dumbfounding.